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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23070007">Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilith_morgana/pseuds/lilith_morgana'>lilith_morgana</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Lucifer (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst and Feels, Established Relationship, F/M, Hell</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-03-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 08:54:42</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>725</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23070007</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilith_morgana/pseuds/lilith_morgana</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>When it comes down to it, all good stories are stories about love or devastation.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Chloe Decker/Lucifer Morningstar</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>108</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Lucifer (TV) Foxy's Collection of Background Fics</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arlome/gifts">Arlome</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>For darling Arlome, enabler of angst and historical fiction as well as an overall awesome person. Happy birthday, have some angst!</p><p>Title borrowed from Richard Siken’s poem 'Scheherazade'</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“So.” Linda tilts her head, unfolds her arms and gives him that anticipatory smile that tells him the doctor is out, as per their recent agreement. “I’ve been meaning to ask you a little bit more about, oh you know--” she pauses, adjusts the hem of her skirt and for a second he longs for their first agreement, the more carnal one. “- the <em> entire </em> human history.” <br/><br/>Lucifer smiles, quick and easy.<br/><br/>“Go on then,” he says. It’s a novelty, this particular deal, yet so much of it remains the same.<br/><br/>He spins tales like Norns spin their threads of fate - incessantly, methodically, by design; he tells tales like Scheherazade , as though his life depends upon it and in some aspects yes, perhaps it does. They’re helpless creatures but he’s the exile with something to prove.<br/><br/>Humans want to forget they are mortal; he wants to pretend that he is to shut out the desperate rage of eternity in his bones.<br/><br/>Sometimes they are, indeed, perfectly aligned.<br/><br/></p><p> </p><p>*<br/><br/><br/>He tells the humans about the Romans, about the Spartans and Mayans, about all their intricately crude wars and the outcomes, he speaks of explorers and adventurers - <em> ah, Vasco da Gama, now he was a bit of a bastard, wasn’t he? A stick so far up his arse you could see it when he spoke. </em> He lets the Siege of Paris evolve into a long-winded story about how the bloody Prussians ruined a perfectly lovely feast for him and two French noblewomen. <em> Elephant steak, darling, now that is hardly an aphrodisiac. </em> And if anyone asks about food he can talk for days - weeks, likely - about all the treats he’s found for himself during his visits. He’ll speak of blanched almonds and fried sweetbread, of figs with honey and goat cheese, of veal so tender and buttery it melts on the back of his tongue; he mentions Black Caps, tells them they are a kind of baked apples he only had once but could never forget. During long nights he divulges tales of the wonders of the world to wide-eyed lovers, delights in their disbelief, presses another kiss to an incredulous cheek, ties another ribbon around a willing wrist. It’s easy - he’s as human as they need him to be, thinks himself Prometheus unbound and perhaps he <em>is</em>. All stories are lies. <br/><br/>He flatters and offends, twists their fates around his own as though he doesn’t possess the power to wreak their world into chaos or as though that doesn’t matter.<br/><br/>He doesn’t tell them that most of his knowledge, almost everything he has ever learned from humanity, is experience siphoned from the dead. That before his exile becomes more permanent, most parts of his collection of human history are glimpses of light stolen from the endless string of despair that floods Hell, broken images told by hollow voices. <br/><br/><br/><br/>*<br/><br/></p><p>Chloe, unlike most, asks very little; he rarely gives her the opportunity and life gets in the way.<br/><br/>He <em> thinks </em> about what he would tell her, all those long stakeouts and the nights in the beginning, when she steps into Lux with a casualness she doesn’t possess, claiming she wants to share a drink. Thinks about what he could offer but knows that regardless of the answer it’s going to be too little or too massive, the weight and reach of a fallen angel’s desperate love much more terrifying than it is comforting.<br/><br/>And later, during all those stolen years together, there is simply no time or so they both claim. </p><p>She tells him about herself, sometimes in a torrent of open-minded confessions, sometimes shyly as it seems to dawn on her how narrow her perspective is, how it's absolutely insignificant in the grand scheme of things; he says <em> it's everything to me </em> and it's the most honest he's ever been. </p><p>“I love you,” he tells her, long overdue then as often as he can, and thinks about his kingdom, the ruins of it that he had to walk through to get back to her, the cost of his particular love. If she is aware, she never mentions it. </p><p>“It's always been you,” he tells her again and again and doesn't mention the scope of his <em> always</em>, its inherent desolation. </p><p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p><p>*<br/><br/></p><p>When it comes down to it, all good stories are stories about love or devastation. </p><p>Sometimes they are, indeed, perfectly aligned.</p>
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